To The Stars...

I remember going into the theatre in the late 1970s and seeing a young woman with a flowing white gown, an unwavering demeanour…and a peculiar set of buns. She looked directly into the eyes of every villain and wouldn’t back down. She was unlike any princess I had ever seen in a movie before. Her legacy influenced countless women of my generation by providing them with someone they could look up to: not a perfect person, but a strong one.

I had the incredible fortune of personally being surrounded by such a woman in “real” life. My grandmother was the daughter of a high-ranking Kwagu’ł chief and truly was a princess. She was stern and direct and I listened to her every word. I would absorb conversations between her and my mom and only comprehend a quarter of what was being said in our Kwakwala language. When I did understand, she would look at me with eyes beaming and reassuringly state, “you understand!”

In her teachings, she let me know that I represented her wherever I went. When we would journey to potlatches without her, we were reminded of this before we left. These lessons have remained with me and, to this day, I always try to uphold her legacy in the best way possible.

Unfortunately, the hard lesson of life is that we lose the people we care about most—even the princesses. We are reminded of the lessons they taught us in the ways we instruct our children. On clear nights, we look up into the sky…and gaze. In the vastness of the universe, we know they must be looking down on us because their soul must have journeyed up…to the stars….